The Pustulent Lord

So, I've been having some Interwebz difficulties at home.  The Italians just don't seem to have the same sense of customer support urgency that those of us from the States might be familiar with.  Not necessarily a bad thing, but anywho...  So, for Delve! Zine I wanted to give a little bit of what to expect for my initial outing.  Right now, it'll mostly consist of an adventure designed for mid level characters.  The adventure takes place in a location that can easily be inserted into any campaign.  It'll tie into my Moinar Marches Campaign but no explicit references to that campaign in the adventure itself.  The adventure centers around an unscrupulous advisor to a local baron who plots to have the baron overthrown and himself put in the baron's place.  Ultimately, the Baron is indeed deposed, however, the advisor is himself betrayed and exiled.  The exiled advisor allies himself with a cabal of practioners of the black arts.  Through study, avarice, ambition, lust, and betrayal he soon overtakes the cabal to become the head of the calab.  With a thrist for revenge, he then plots to win the Barony that he believes rightfully his.  To this end he makes deals with the dark forces for more power.  He becomes a practioner of pestilence magic and seeks to gain his revenge on those who betrayed him. 

The site is small, consisting of 11 keyed areas.  There are a couple of special locations such as a library that are not easily accessed.  I've got a few  new monsters such as the contagion guards and plague wraiths.  The adventure can be played as a straight forward find the boss bad guy and get rid of him, but I've put some hooks in so a DM can make it more than that.  For instance, the main bad guy is in league with devils to get his revenge.  He did do the typical soul selling routine.  However, being the trecherous fellow that he is, he's been entreating with other, more alien beings from other dimensions to gain power and play them off the devils and gain his soul back.  There are ways to travel to other planes of existence, there are new spells for plague/pestilence magic, there are creatures that want their vengance upon the main bad guy, there are innocents to free, there are devils to fight or bargain with, etc.  All in one small adventure. 

So that constitutes the bulk of the first issue of Delve and probably a little background article on the Moinar Marches, my own campaign that combines weird fantasy, mythos style beings, plot and intrigue, politics, mythic fantasy, coercion and subversion and more into one "fantasy Balkans" type setting.  It's getting there so more to follow soon.